Atlanta development firm to pitch business plan for old Macon Health Club

A plan is in the works to resurrect the long-vacant Macon Health Club at First and Cherry streets. 

Ripple Hospitality Partners, an Atlanta investment and development firm founded in 2024, has spent the past four months developing a business plan for the four-story building at 389 First St. which has sat vacant for nearly a decade. 

A proposal, set to be presented during a public meeting next month, calls for transforming the building into a boutique hotel, a membership-based health club with a pool and a private dinner club, as well as an open-to-the-public restaurant with a bar on the bottom floor, said Alex Morrison, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority and also the county’s director of planning and public spaces.

“In order for any redevelopment to happen, there would need to be significant demolition and reorganizing of the building,” Morrison said. “It will end up being a total rehab of the property once it’s all said and done.”

Construction could begin as early as 2028 or 2029, he said. 

One initial idea floated for the building, which the UDA acquired from the Macon-Bibb County Hospital Authority in a land-swap deal in 2023, included plans for micro-loft apartments. However, Morrison said the floor plans were ultimately too small for residential units. 

“A property like this will provide a little bit of a different product,” he said, adding that there’s a market for a private-dining establishment like the City Club, which once operated on the building’s top floor but closed in 2008.

“That’s something that is oft requested and being able to restore that to this property would be a great boon for downtown,” Morrison said.

Goodwill Industries is also part of the ongoing conversation about the redevelopment of the old Health Club, Morrison said. 

“They run a Pinnacle Club in Augusta, which is very similar to what the City Club was in Macon,” Morrison said.

The Pinnacle Club first opened in 1967 and is located on the 17th floor of an office building at 7th and Broad streets in downtown Augusta. The club is managed by Edgar’s Hospitality Group, a division of Goodwill that also operates Edgar’s Bistro on Eisenhower Parkway in Macon.  

The UDA also acquired the building across First Street from the Health Club in its 2023 land-swap deal. Morrison said the UDA is planning to rehab the building and maintain it as an office space. The parking garage attached to that building would be used by the city club development too, he said. 

As part of the deal, the UDA took responsibility for paying off a $1.3 million bond note the hospital authority had on the property. Morrison said the UDA got a loan from NewTown Macon, a nonprofit that is the UDA’s development partner on this project, to get enough cash on hand to close the deal. The properties acquired by the UDA serve as collateral for the loan.

“We’re paying that off over time, and the hope is that, whomever we work with on the development, they will generate enough money that they’ll pay that note off,” Morrison said.

Morrison said getting the Health Club building back into productive use will make the First Street corridor “a very welcoming place.” 

The Health Club building includes a basketball gym, a wooden walking track and a visibly deteriorating swimming pool. The gym closed permanently in 2017. The building was constructed in 1960 and designed by local architect W. Elliot Dunwody Jr. It opened as the P.A. McArthur Youth Center of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Macon Georgia.